Wilfrid Kent Hughes
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Sir Wilfrid Selwyn Kent Hughes, KBE, MVO, MC, (12 June 1895 – 31 July 1970) was an Australian soldier, sportsman and federal government minister.
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[edit] History
[edit] Early life
Kent Hughes was the second child of seven of an English surgeon called Wilfred Kent Hughes and his wife Clementina (nee Rankin), Kent Hughes was born in East Melbourne and educated at Trinity Grammar, Melbourne Grammar and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar in 1914. The family name was Hughes, and young Wilfrid was usually called Bill or Billy. Later, to avoid confusion with the Australian Labor Party politician Billy Hughes, he adopted one of his middle names, Kent, as part of his surname. It is not known why he spelled his given name "Wilfrid" while his father spelled it "Wilfred."
[edit] Military
Kent Hughes joined the Australian Imperial Forces on the outbreak of World War I. Promoted to captain and later major, Kent Hughes served in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade in Gallipoli, the Sinai, Palestine and Syria, winning the Military Cross in 1917 and appointed Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General of the Australian Mounted Division. He published a volume of memoirs, Modern Crusaders, about his exploits in the Light Horse Brigade in 1918.
[edit] University
At war's end, Kent Hughes entered Christ Church College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, gaining a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Modern History, captained the Oxford ski team and showed a proficiency for athletics. His athletic prowess was such that Kent Hughes was chosen to represent Australia in the 110 and 400 metre hurdles at the 1920 Summer Olympics. He finished fourth in his heat of the 110 metre hurdles and failed to progress but won his 400 metre heat before finishing fifth in the semi final.
Following his graduation from Oxford, Kent Hughes married wealthy American heiress Edith Kerr on 3 February 1923 in Montclair, New Jersey and returned to Melbourne to work in his father's publishing company while sizing up a career in politics.
[edit] Political Life
In 1927 Kent Hughes was elected Nationalist member for Kew in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Opposed to the conservative establishment and what he considered the mediocrity of Victorian politics, Kent Hughes, along with his close friend and ally Robert Menzies, founded the Young Nationalists Organisation in 1929, which became a powerful force in conservative politics in Victoria.
Following the formation of the United Australia Party in 1931, Kent Hughes served in several portfolios, including Railways, Labour and Transport. It was as Minister for Sustenance in 1932-33, a portfolio designed to deal with the poverty of the Great Depression, that he became known as the "Minister for Starvation". He was Deputy Leader of the UAP from 1935-40.
In January 1933 Kent Hughes became embroiled in the Bodyline affair. A friend of English captain Douglas Jardine from their Oxford days, Kent Hughes publicly defended Jardine's tactics of sustained short pitched bowling, arguing that Australia used similar tactis against England in 1921. He also criticised the protests of the Australian Cricket Board of Control towards Jardine, stating they were "boorish, bitter (and) insulting". These comments were gleefully seized upon by the English press.
While he was attacking the Cricket Board of Control, Kent Hughes was simultaneously organising the Australian tour of the Duke of Gloucester, and for his efforts was appointed MVO in 1934. In 1938 he was manager of the Australian team at the Empire Games held in Sydney.
[edit] Why I Have Become a Fascist
During the late 1920s and 1930s Kent Hughes developed a strong sympathy for fascism, and in 1933 he published a series of articles in the Melbourne Herald, titled "Why I Have Become a Fascist." In one article he wrote that fascism "endeavours to avoid the egotistical attitude of laissez faire and the inertia of socialism." He saw it as "a half-way house between the two systems." In fascist countries, he said, "industrial peace and security have been found to be worth the price of sacrificing some of the individual liberty previously enjoyed." In what he called "British communities,"' however, he expected that fascism would "be garbed not in the dictatorial black shirt, but in the more sedate style of the British Parliamentary representative."[1]
Kent Hughes was unique among prominent Australians in publicly identifying as a fascist, although he never joined a fascist organisation or took any overt act that could be described as fascist. These articles were held against him for the rest of his life. His biographer Frederick Howard maintains that Kent Hughes did not know much about fascism and used the word mainly for its shock value. "Kent Hughes does not seem to have paid enough attention to the difference between theory and practice in Mussolini's Italy," he observes.[2]
In 1939, without resigning from Parliament, Kent Hughes rejoined the Army, becoming a colonel in the 8th Division, serving in the Malaya campaign of 1942. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Singapore and was kept in the Changi POW camp, where he was beaten and half-starved. In 1943 he was shipped as a slave labourer to Taiwan. In October 1944 he was shipped to Japan and on to Korea, and then sent by rail to Mukden in Manchuria, where prisoners of war were put to work in arms factories. In August 1945 he was liberated by the invading Red Army. He was appointed an OBE in 1947 for his wartime service.
Kent Hughes returned to politics, joined the newly founded Liberal Party and was Deputy Premier, Minister for Transport and Minister for Public Instruction in the Liberal state government of Thomas Hollway in 1947-49, as well as serving as Chief Secretary and Minister for Electrical Undertakings in 1948. He published a colourful account of his wartime experiences in Slaves of the Samurai (1946). He also took up the case of Australian General Gordon Bennett, who was accused of cowardice and desertion after leaving Singapore without authorisation shortly before the city surrendered to the Japanese. Kent Hughes appeared before the Royal Commission into Bennett's case, and argued that Bennett was correct to avoid being taken prisoner and return to Australia to continue the fight.
In 1949 Kent Hughes transferred to federal politics, being elected for the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, then a safe Liberal seat. From 1951 to 1956 he was chairman of the Organising Committee for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, while serving simultaneously as Minister for the Interior, Minister for Works and Minister for Housing in the Menzies Government. In 1957 he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his work in organising the Games. In 1954 he officially welcomed Queen Elizabeth II to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, of which he was Chairman of Trustees.
Menzies dropped Kent Hughes from his ministry in 1956, mostly because of Kent Hughes's continued public comments on foreign affairs and defence matters, in which he took an independent line favouring a policy even more anti-Communist than that of Menzies, higher defence spending and the reintroduction of conscription. He became a strong supporter of Taiwan, and met several times with Chiang Kai-shek. He remained a backbench member until his death in 1970. Survived by his wife and three daughters, Kent Hughes was accorded a state funeral. Obituaries highlighted his war service and Olympian status (The Times referred to him as "one of the more colourful Australian parliamentarians") while sidestepping his earlier flirtation with fascism.
Kent Hughes was very popular with the ex-service community, and appeared in the ANZAC Day march in April each year on horseback, in his World War I uniform. He campaigned for improved benefits for ex-servicemen, particularly ex-POWs. An award presented by the Victorian Olympic Council to the Victorian athlete it considers to have given the most outstanding performance at a Games is named in his honour.
[edit] References
- ________ (1933) "The Leg Theory", p. 6, The Times, London, 20 January 1933.
- ________ (1970) "Sir W Kent Hughes", p. 14, The Times, London, 1 August 1970.
- Hancock, I. (2000) "Kent Hughes, Sir Wilfrid Selwyn (1895 - 1970)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 15, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. ISBN 0-522-84236-4
- Henderson, G. (1994) Menzies Child: The Liberal Party of Australia 1944-94, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW. ISBN 1-86373-747-2
- Papers of Sir Wilfrid Kent Hughes (1895 - 1970) - MS 4856. Held at the National Library of Australia [1]. Accessed 10 June 2006.
